Shoot Club: All Our Pretty Songs Part Four: Pick Up My Guitar And Play Just Like Yesterday

"It is the biggest and most beautiful box I've ever seen," Trevor is telling everyone. "Even better than that military looking box for Steel Battalion. Remember that one?" he asks me, trying to figure out which metal tubes go where for the drum kit platform. He's already done it wrong once.

"It's like getting a swing set for Christmas and having to wait for your dad to build it," Peter says, seeing all the bits sprawled out among the cardboard detritus from the packaging. Me and Trevor, having been raised by single moms, never got swing sets for Christmas.

"That's nothing," Trevor says. "We had to go on a quest last night to get this. It's like the Holy Grail, or that briefcase in Pulp Fiction." He's telling them about our trip while he unravels cords and plugs them into the adapter, but they're not really listening. They're looking at the box and reading the case and tapping the strum bar on the flat regal guitar and trying to spin the drum sticks. One of the sticks goes flying.

We're not sure whether this is awesome or whether it sucks. But we're willing to go along with it. Each of us dutifully does our term of service with the character builder. This takes nearly a half hour, mainly because Mike has to check every single hair style. Then we're all signed in and ready to go.

"Okay," Trevor says. "We're almost there. But first, we need a band name."

"The Cocks of the Walk," Peter blurts out.

"No, we're not going to do it that way. Everyone write down a band name and put it in the hat." He's rips strips of paper and hands them out.

"You don't like The Cocks of the Walk?" Peter asks.

"Put it on your piece of paper," Trever tells him.

"I need a pencil," Jude says.

"Wait your turn. There's only two pencils."

"I'm still trying to think of a band name," Peter says, chewing the eraser end of the pencil. "One better than The Cocks of the Walk."

"Dude, don't put that in your mouth. Other people have to use it."

Trevor gathers the names in my Half-Life baseball cap. He pulls one out.

"'Knights of Rock'? Who wrote that? That is totally gay. I'm going to veto that."

"I don't think that's how drawing names from a hat works," Jude says. "You're supposed to go with the one you pick. But, yeah, let's veto that one."

"'Trevor's Mom'? No. Just no. That's not even funny." He takes out another piece of paper. "'BioShock Rock'? That's you, right?" he asks me.

"Actually, no."

"I did it for you," Peter tells me. "I couldn't think of a name better than The Cocks of the Walk."

"Thanks. That's very cool of you."

"Okay, you can't just put something in there to kiss up to the host. I'm going to draw another name. Ah, this one must be yours."

Trevor holds up the piece of paper on which I wrote 'Garrison Keillor Can Suck It!'.

"I don't think that really reads very well as a band name," he says.

I shrug. "I've heard worse."

"Plus, it's too long. We don't get that many letters. Okay, here's the name we're going with. 'Stumping for Incumbents'." He holds up the ripped strip of paper.

We look around to see whose name that was. No one seems to be the offending party. Trevor's already entering it with the 360's gamepad by the time we figure out it was his idea.